Their Mating Illusion [Paranormal Protection Unit 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (12 page)

Growling softly, he smacked her bottom. “Anything and everything, darling mine,” he teased, getting her out of the room quickly. Walking with her, he was quiet for a time. “He thinks I’m not trying,” he murmured quietly to her. “I am. I know I’ll never convince him but every time I try it’s like there’s something just not right. Like something is out of place or not connecting as it should,” he whispered as they moved at a crisp pace to the clean room. “I feel like I’m missing something important,” he muttered.

“It’s okay, honey, I’m sure that it will click with you soon, my love,” Maya assured him. “I’m not worried about how long it’s taking you to learn it, darling, I really am not.” She looked up at him and winked. “When you are ready to bloom, darling, you will.”

Snorting at her words, Quincy hugged her closer to him and sighed softly. His little bond-mate had such faith in him. He loved her all the more for the support she was giving him. Unfortunately he felt like he was letting everyone, her and the Teams, down by not figuring it out. Damn it, he was one of the smartest damn people on the planet and he couldn’t figure out a new ability!

She walked into the clean room with him and looked up at the video cameras. “All right, first things first.” She moved in close to him and wrapped her arms around him with a smile. “How about you kill the cameras for a time so that no one can see me naked as well?” It was all a part of how she put it to him that would make him tap into what he needed to do.

Without even a thought, he killed the link between the cameras and the security room. The lights went out on each but he didn’t look away from her. Kissing her softly, he brushed his lips over hers with a smile. “You are the sexiest instructor I’ve ever had.”

Maya laughed and held onto him. “I love you. If I’m the sexiest instructor that you have ever had then I’m totally and fully happy to have it as such. I always want you to be attracted to me. I really and truly want you to continue to forever want me, love me, and never let me go.”

Lifting his head, Quincy touched her cheek with light fingers. “I love you so much I feel like I could burst out in song at the drop of a hat. I am never, ever letting you go, Maya. You are mine and while I might not be one of the changers, I’m fucking possessive as hell.” She was his, all his, and only his for the rest of time.

“Good.” Maya licked her lips and then spoke. “How about you get rid of our clothes now so that we can see about trying to blow a few fuses this time with power?”

“Are you sure that it’s all in place?” Talon demanded. “Everything is in place, right? She won’t actually be harmed, right?” He had planned everything perfectly. They had put everything into play so that Quincy would come into his power because it was now necessary that he do so.

“Absolutely.” Mac nodded and pointed to one of the human contractors they used on some missions. “Bernie will be driving, he’ll have a malfunction, the wheel will jerk out of his hands, he’ll be thrown out, and will roll. When he comes up, he’ll yell a warning out which Trey will echo from point B there.” He turned to point to the man. “We’ve done this over and over, easily twenty times. There have been a couple minor variations but absolutely nothing that could harm her. Especially if you’re right about Skittles’s instincts taking over like you think.”

“Trust me, with her being pregnant he’s going to make damn sure that she’s safe.” Well he had to assume that she was pregnant because she had been ovulating, and they had been far too fucking sexually active for his peace of mind. “Make it happen. Now.”

“You got it, boss.” Mac nodded and signalled to Bernie to get into place. Praying to Gaia everything went exactly as planned, he slipped up to his perch to wait and watch. Talon booked it out of there and ensured that he was nowhere near the scene so he couldn’t be blamed. Signalling Trey, who took up position reading as he did over lunch, everyone just waited until Mac spotted them. Watching until they hit the magic mark they’d figured out through a lot of trial and error, he pressed the comms. “All right, Bernie, they are moving right on pace.”

Mac watched as Maya moved from the run on the side of the compound’s road and off to the shade. It was at the three-mile mark where she typically ditched Quincy for his longer ten-mile mark. When Quincy began to come back around from his run, he knew that the timing was just right. Finally, when Quincy was close enough to Maya to see what was happening, he spoke softly in his mic and comms set. “All right, Bernie,” Mac said as he watched everything with a careful eye. “Trouble now.” Instantly the tire blew on the Jeep and threw the man out as it veered right where it was supposed to, straight for where Maya now stood stretching out her muscles from her run and waiting for Quincy. “Come on, Q,” Mac muttered and saw him coming right along.

Bernie stumbled to his feet on cue and yelled out a warning. Trey, popping his head up but too far away to do anything even with his speed, raced forward, lunch and book forgotten.

Catching a shimmer of light off of something, Quincy focused and stumbled. “Maya!” He screamed her name as he ran faster. He wasn’t going to make it. Trey wasn’t going to make it. In that instant everything narrowed down and he felt the huge surge of energy. Throwing out a hand, he disintegrated the Jeep into nothingness as he kept running to his mate.

Maya had turned when the shouts were yelled and just stood there. For the life of her she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, just watched the Jeep tumbling toward her. Seeing Quincy, she turned to him and then she felt the intense surge of power and turned to watch the Jeep as it was destroyed so that not even a speck of dust remained of it.

Turning to Quincy, she ran for him, and when he caught her in his arms, held onto him tightly, shaking in fear at the realization of what nearly happened. “You saved me,” she whispered on a shaky breath, and tears dropped from her eyes.

Hugging her to him as tight as he could, Quincy kissed her face over and over even as Trey and an out-of-breath Bernie ran up to them. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. Are you all right?” Bernie asked with genuine horror in his voice and eyes. But it was Trey that gave it away and Quincy saw red.

“You motherfuckers,” he breathed out angrily.

Maya frowned and looked at the men and then back to Quincy. “Q?” she asked and then understood immediately. “Oh lord. Enough. I need you to get control of yourself, honey, or you are going to hurt someone.” And it wouldn’t be her. It would be his team, his friends.

“Get away from her, now,” Quincy said softly, energy beginning to crackle around him. “Leave,” he warned. It would be his only warning. He was so fucking mad. When Trey and Bernie backed off, he calmed a little and looked down at her. “Are you really all right?” he asked, running his hands over everything he could reach, checking her with care.

“Yes, honey, I’m perfectly fine,” she assured him and then moved in closer to him. “How about you? Are you all right, my love?” she asked and began to move her hands over him as well. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Scared out of about fifty years of my fucking life,” he said and hugged her to him again. “I can’t lose you, Maya,” he whispered as the last of his anger fell away and fear slid in and shook him. “I can’t lose you.” Oh Gods, he was going to burst into tears any second.
Fucking great.

“You aren’t going to lose me. I love you so very much,” she told him as she stroked her hands over his back and tugged him in even closer. “How about you open a Vortex and slide us home?” She had only been able to do the single-person tunnels but he could, or should, be able to do the ones that would carry them both.

Nodding, he pulled her in closer and opened…Well, it wasn’t really a Vortex, but something else, something smoother and more intimate. Stepping in with her, he didn’t let her go when it dropped them in his bedroom, not a single thing out of place or even disturbed by the tunnel they’d used to get there. That was seriously cool, but later he’d dissect it. Now he needed to kiss her.

Maya kissed him back. Desperate for him, she began to tug at his workout clothes. “Naked.” It was a demand. “Because I can’t wait.” Maya was already so wet that she was sure she was gushing in her panties and spandex shorts.

With a thought, he stripped them both down, their clothing just gone. He’d worry about the where later. For now he needed to be inside his mate. Taking them both to the bed, he thrust into her hard. Kissing her desperately, he began to take her, all sense of control gone. Catching her hands, he laced their fingers together and pressed them up over her head, her back arching so her breasts rubbed at him with each movement.

Her legs wrapped around him, and when he pulled out of her, she smiled up at him and tugged him back in, hard. “Fuck me hard, Q. No holding back,” she demanded, her nails digging into his knuckles in demand.

Growling softly at her, he thrust harder, taking her with everything he had inside of him. Giving her absolutely everything he had, he bit her neck just hard enough to sting. Releasing her hands, he lifted her hips up to a better angle that allowed him to hit her as deep as possible.

Meeting his body thrust for thrust, she sobbed out and rubbed her breasts against his chest. “Please.” Baring her neck to him again, she shivered. “I love it. Don’t stop,” she demanded and bit him right back, her mouth closing over his shoulder and biting hard.

Not normally one for pain, her bite totally turned him on and had him slamming her down into the bed over and over. Some part of him decided to reciprocate, and Quincy bit her shoulder hard, hard enough to draw a few drops of her blood as his orgasm slammed through him. Yelling her name against her skin, he squeezed her tight as his seed spilled hotly into her sheath.

Maya had tasted blood on her tongue, but when he began to come, she felt her orgasm following right along with him. Screaming, she held onto him and then pulled him fully against her and came. Maya’s orgasm was like a shock, a bolt of pure power, enough so that her vision wavered and her breath paused in her lungs. “Quincy.” She whispered his name and blinked out of it, passing out from just how good the sex and ensuing orgasm had been.

Panting hard, he held her as he tried to regain some semblance of civility. Actually, he was just praying his brain hadn’t fried from that orgasm. Lifting his head, he touched her cheek. “Maya?” he asked in concern. Her heart was beating fine, if fast. Her breathing was perfect so he didn’t worry…too much.

“Q?” She whispered his name sleepily. “I think that you seriously short-circuited a part of my brain,” she said with a grin. “And I loved it.” Damn, she had loved every single part of being with him. “I really would love to be able to do that often, please,” she all but begged and curled tightly to him. “Having us doing that often would be better than running,” she teased.

“Amen,” he muttered as he snuggled her close to him. Dragging up the blankets, he tucked her in. “I love you, sweetheart.” Brushing a kiss to her hair lightly, he smiled. “Sleep now, we both need to sleep before we try and figure out all that happened today.”

“I love you, too, Quincy,” Maya whispered sleepily. “I know what happened,” she stated with a yawn. “You came into your Royal power. Something that I’m sure was felt all throughout the magical world.”

“Oh hell, that really wasn’t what I wanted to hear.” And yet it was a good thing, too. He’d come into the power, definitely not how he’d wanted, and he had a serious bone to pick with Talon on that. But he really wasn’t so happy about the announcement of sorts going out to the entire Mage and Warlock realm.

“I know, honey, but it had to be done all the same,” she admitted softly to him and sighed right along with him. “One way or another it had to come out that you were the start of the new Royal Line.” Maya paused and frowned. “Do you have family that will want to become a part of your new home and place in life?”

“No,” he said quietly and without intonation. While his mother was alive, he had no other blood relatives that he knew of. “There’s no one, and what do you mean, ‘new’ home?” he asked suspiciously, not having missed that little tidbit.

“Everything of the Royal Family is yours now, honey,” Maya told him. “You are now officially a very, very rich man. I’m sure that as soon as the power reverberated through the Magic Users, the Royal accounts were locked and Michael no longer has access to them. Why do you think you’ve had to pay dues to the Warlock world for so long? It’s all yours now, darling,” she told him simply. And it was. It was his, not hers, his.

“Uh, right.” He frowned slightly. “I was rich, sorta, before, so what am I supposed to do with more money? And why the dues? Seriously, I’ve never understood that.” And he was almost a hundred and twenty percent sure he’d never actually paid in, either. But then he’d always been considered less than who other magic users thought he should be to qualify to be called a Warlock. Only Talon, Gaia, and then Maya had seemed to see something more.

“The dues have always been in place from the time when the Royal Lines began. They’ve just never been repealed,” Maya murmured with a shrug. “The dues pay the Royal Guards, the Elite Guards, and give a huge number of Lesser Magic Users a place in life, a position, and have created many jobs to do so. As for what to do with the money…” She shrugged. “I have no idea, honey. I really don’t.”

“But if they’ve been pulling in funds all this time of whatever amounts from each and every Magic User since the beginning of whenever…” Quincy did the math in his head and whistled. “Even with paying the Royal and Elite Guards, employees, trustees, and whomever else, there’s absolutely no need to keep pulling in funds. Even with all the years before banks showed up and interest rates and such, there has to be such a huge amount in the accounts there’s no way to ever use it all even if we paid more people more money.”

“Which I believe is why we had needed a new regime. One that wouldn’t mind changing up the way of life. You have been needed for a very long time, my love,” she told him softly. “You know that as well as I do.” Change had been necessary. She was happy that it was Quincy that Gaia had chosen for the new King. He embodied every aspect of what a King should be. He might not see it or think it, but she knew it for the truth that it was.